[106] The Act allows children to be employed for 10 hours if they do not work day after day, but only on alternate days. In the main, this clause remained inoperative.

[107] "As a reduction in their hours of work would cause a larger number (of children) to be employed, it was thought that the additional supply of children from 8 to 9 years oi age would meet the increased demand" (l. c., p.

13 ).

[108] "Rep. of Insp. of Fact.," 31st Oct., 1848, p. 16.

[109] "I found that men who had been getting lOs. a week, had had Is. taken off for a reduction in the rate of 10 per cent, and Is. 6d. off the remaining 9s. for the reduction in time, together 2s. 6d.. and notwithstanding this, many of them said they would rather work 10 hours." l. c.

[110] "Though I signed it [the petition!, I said at the time I was putting my hand to a wrong thing.' 'Then why did you put your hand to it?' 'Because I should have been turned off if I had refused.' Whence it would appear that this petitioner felt himself 'oppressed,' but not exactly by the Factory Act." l. c., p. 102.

[111] p. 17, l. c. In Mr. Homer's district 10,270 adult male labourers were thus examined in 181 factories. Their evidence is to be found in the appendix to the Factory Reports for the half-year ending October 1848. These examinations furnish valuable material in other connexions also.

[118] The nature of capital remains the same in its developed as in its undeveloped form. In the code which the influence of the slave-owners, shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War, imposed on the territory of New Mexico, it is said that the labourer, in as much as the capitalist has bought his labour-power, "is his (the capitalist's) money." The same view was current among the Roman patricians. The money they had advanced to the plebeian debtor had been transformed via the means of subsistence into the flesh and blood of the debtor. This "flesh and blood" were, therefore, "their money.'' Hence, the Shylock-law of the Ten Tables. Linguet's hypothesis that the patrician creditors from time to time prepared, beyond the Tiber, bunquets of debtors' flesh, may remain as undecided as that of Daumer on the Christian Euchanst.

[123] By I. and II. Will. IV., ch. 24, s. 10, known as Sir John Wobhouse's Factory Act, it was forbidden to any owner of a cotton-spinning or weaving mill, or the father, son, or brother of such owner, to act as Justice of the Peace in any inquiries that concerned the Factory Act.

[124] l. c.

[125] Reports, &c., for 30th April, 1849, p. S.

[126] Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1849, p. 6.

[127] Reports, &c., for 30th April, 1849, p. 21.

[128] Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1848, p. 95.

[129] See Reports, &c., for 30th April, 1849, p. 6, and the detailed explanation of the "shifting system," by Factory Inspectors Howell and Saunders, in "Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1848." See also the petition to the Queen from the clergy of Ashton and vicinity, in the spring of 1849, against the shift system."

Edited by K. Marx. April number, 1850, p. 13.) The same "high" Court of Justice discovered, during the American Civil War, a verbal ambiguity which exactly reversed the meaning of the law against the arming of pirate ships.

[132] Rep., &c., for 30th April, 1850.

[133] In winter, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. may be substituted.

[134] "The present law (of 1850) was a compromise whereby the employed surrendered the benefit of the Ten Hours' Act for the advantage of one uniform period for the commencement and termination of the labour of those whose labour is restricted." (Reports, &c., for 30th April, 1852, p. 14.) [135] Repons, &c., for Sept., 1844, p. 13.

[136] l. c.

[137] l. c.

[138] "Reports, &c., for 31st Oct., 1846," p. 20.

[139] Reports, &c., for 31st Oct., 1861, p. 26.

[140] l. c.,p. 27. On the whole the working population, subject to the Factory Act, has greatly improved physically.

All medical testimony agrees on this point, and personal obsenation at different times has convinced me of it.

Nevertheless, and exclusive of the terrible death-rate of children in the first years of their life, the official reports of Dr. Greenhow show the unfavourable health condition of the manufacturing districts as compared with "agricultural districts of normal health." As evidence, take the following table from his 1861 report: —

– &nbsp– &nbsp–

[141] It is well known with what reluctance the English "Free-traders," gave up the protective duty on the silk manufacture. Instead of the protection against French importation, the absence of protection to English factory children now senes their turn.

[142] During 1859 and 1860, the zenith years of the English cotton industry, some manufacturer3 tried, by the decoy bait of higher wages forover-time,to reconcile the adult male operatives to an extension of the working-day.

The hand-mule spinners and self-actor mincers put an end to the experiment by a petition to their employers in which they say, "Plainly speaking, our lives are to us a burthen; and, while we are confined to the mills nearly two days a week more than the other operatives of the country, we feel like helots in the land, and that we are perpetuating a system injurious to ourselves and future generations.... This, therefore, is to give you most respectful notice that when we commence work again after the Christmas and New Year's holidays, we shall work 60 hours per week, and no more, or from six to six, with one hour and a half out." (Reports, &rc., for 30th April, 1860, p.

30.) [143] On the means that the wording of this Act afforded for its violation cf the Parliamentary Return "Factories Regulation Act" (6th August, 1859), and in it Leonard Homer's "Suggestions for amending the Factory Acts to enable the Inspectors to prevent illegal working, now becoming very prevalent."

[144] "Children of the age of 8 years and upwards, have, indeed, been employed from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the last half year in my district." (Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1857, p. 39.) [145] "The Printworks' Act is admitted to be a failure both with reference to its educational and protective provisions." (Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1862, p. 52.) [146] Thus, e.g., E. Potter in a letter to the Times of March 24th, 1863. The Times reminded him of the maoufacturers' revolt against the Ten Hours' Bill.

[147] Thus, among others, Mr. W. Newmarch, collaborator and editor of Tooke's "History of Prices." Is it a scientific advance to make cowardly concessions to public opinion?

[148] The Act passed in 1860, determined that, in regard to dye and bleachworks, the working-day should be fixed on August Ist, 1861, provisionally at 12 hours, and definitely on August Ist, 1862, at 10 hours, i.e., at 10 1/2 hours for ordinary days, and 7 1/2 for Saturday. Now, when the fatal year, 1862, came, the old farce was repeated.

Besides, the manufacturers petitioned Parliament to allow the employment of young persons and women for 12 hours during one year longer. "In the existing condition of the trade (the time of the cotton famine), it was ueatly to the advantage of the operatives to work 12 hours per day, and make wages when they could." A bill to this effect had been brought in, "and it was mainly due to the action of the operative bleachers in Scotland that the bill was abandoned." (Reports, &:c., for 31st October, 1862, pp. 14-15.) Thus defeated by -the very workpeople, in whose name it pretended to speak Capital discovered, with the help of lawyer spectacles, that the Act of 1860, drawn up, I;ke all the Acts of Parliament for the "protection of labour," in equivocal phrases, gave them a pretext to exclude from its working the calenderers and finishers. English jurisprudence, ever the faithful servant of capital, sanctioned in the COun of Common Pleas this piece of pettifogging. "The operatives have been greatly disappointed... they have comphined of over-work, and it is greatly to be regretted that the clear intention of the legislature should have failed by reason of a faulty definition." (l. c., p. 18.) [149] The "open-air bleachers" had evaded the law of 1860, by means of the lie that no women worked at it in the night. The lie was exposed by the Fwtory Inspectors, and at the same time Parliament was, by petitions ffom the operatives, bereft of its notions as to the cool meadow-fragrance, in which bleaching in the open-air was reported to take place. In this aerial bleaching, drying-rooms were used at temperatures of from 90° to 100° Fahrenheit, in which the work was done for the most part by girls. "Cooling" is the technical expression for their occasional escape from the drying-rooms into the fresh air. "Fifteen girls in stoves. Heat from 80° to 90° for linens, and 100° and upwards for cambrics. Twelve girls ironing and doing-up in a small room about 10 feet square, in the centre of which is a close stove. The girls stand round the stove, which throws out a terrific heat, and dries the cambrics rapidly for the ironers. The hours of work for these hands are unlimited. If busy, they work till 9 or 12 at night for successive nights." (Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1862, p. 56.) A medical man states: "No special hours are allowed for cooling, but if the temperature gets too high, or the workers' hands get soiled from perspiration, they are allowed to go out for a few minutes.... My experience, which is considerable, in treating the diseases of stove workers, compels me to express the opinion that their sanitary condition is by no means so high as that of the operatives in a spinning factory (and Capital, in its memorials to Parliament, had painted them as floridly healthy after the manner of Rubens.) The diseases most observable amongst them are phthisis, bronchitis, irregularity of uterine functions, hysteria in its most aggravated forms, and rheumatism. All of these, I believe, are either directly or indirectly induced by the impure, overheated air of the apartments in which the hands are employed and the want of sufficient comfortable clothing to protect them from the cold, damp atmosphere, in winter, when going to their homes." (l. c., pp. 56-57.) The Factory Inspectors remarked on the supplementary law of 1860, torn from these open-air bleachers: "The Act has not only failed to afford that protection to the workers which it appears to offer, but contains a clause... apparently so worded that, unless persons are detected working after 8 o'clock at night they appear to come under no protective provisions at all, and if they do so work the mode of proof is so doubtful that a conviction can scarcely follow." (l. c., p. 52.) "To all intents and purposes, therefore, as an Act for any benevolent or educational purpose, it is a failure; since it can scarcely be called benevolent to permit, which is tantamount to compelling, women and children to work 14 hours a day with or without meals, as the case may be, and perhaps for longer hours than these, without limit as to age, without reference to sex, and without regard to the social habits of the families of the neighbourhood, in which such works (bleaching and dyeing) are situated." (Reports, &c., for 30th April, 1863, p. 40.) [150] Note to the 2nd Ed. Since 1866, when I wrote the above passages, a reaction has again set in.

[151] "The conduct of each of these classes (capitalists and workmen) has been the result of the relative situatico in which they have been placed." (Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1848, p. 113.) [152] "The employments, placed under restriction, were connected with the manufacture of textile fabrics by the aid of steam or water-power There were two conditions to which an employment must be subject to cause it to be inspected, viz., the use of steam or waterpower, and the manufacture of certain specified fibr=." (Reports, &c., f.or 31st October, 1864, p. 8.) [153] On the condition of so-called domestic industries, specially valuable materials are to be found in the latfft reports of the Children's Employment Commission.

[154] "The Acts of last Session (1864)... embrace a diversity of occupations, the customs in which differ greatly, and the use of mechanical power to give motion to machinery is no longer one of the elements necessary. as formerly, to constitute, in legal phrase, a 'Factory.'" (Reports, &c., for 31st Octaber, 1864, p. 8.) [155] Belgium, the paradise of Continental Liberalism, shows no trace of this movement. Even in the coal and metal mines labourers of both sexes, and all ages, are consumed, in perfect "freedom" at any period and through any length of time. Of every 1,000 persons employed there, 733 are men, 88 women. 135 boys, and 44 girls under 16; in the blast furnaces, &c., of every 1,000, 668 are men, 149 women, 98 boys, and 85 girls under 16. Add to this the low wages for the enormous exploitafion of mature and immature labour-power. The average daily pay for a man is 2s. 8d.. for a woman, 1s. 8d.. for a boy. 1s. 2 1/2 d. As a result, Belgium had in 1863, as compared with 1850, nearly doubled both the amount and the value of its exports of coal, iron, &c.

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